International leaders are calling Vladimir Putin a ‘war criminal’.

…Here’s why charging him might be a long way off

Allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal are beginning to pile up.

International outrage at Russian attacks on civilians, most notably the bombing of a maternity and children’s hospital, have prompted nations and international bodies to launch a range of investigations into the actions of Russia and its leader.

Where do things stand?

US President Joe Biden has made a damning assessment of his Russian counterpart.

“I think he is a war criminal” Mr Biden said when questioned by reporters about Mr Putin.

He was “speaking from the heart”, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

It is a claim the Kremlin strenuously denied.

Just hours before Mr Biden’s comment, the US Senate labelled Mr Putin a war criminal after unanimously passing a resolution seeking an investigation into his regime and the invasion of Ukraine.

The highest court of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has ordered Russia to stop hostilities in Ukraine.

And British Prime Minster Boris Johnson has told the UK parliament that the bombing of innocent civilians “already fully qualifies as a war crime”.

What does all this mean for Putin himself?

The International Criminal Court (ICC), is investigating allegations of war crimes, targeting Mr Putin and other Russian commanders. It launched its investigation at the urging of 39 countries, including Australia.

Mr Putin could be held responsible for any crimes committed by Russia’s military, security services or any other Russian state agencies.

The court is also sure to turn its attention to the actions of other individuals — including Mr Putin’s generals and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

Investigating in an active war zone

Searching for evidence amid the chaos in Ukraine will be difficult, according to Donald Rothwell, an international law expert at the Australian National University.

“At the moment we have an ongoing conflict, we have allegations of war crimes being committed literally every day,” Professor Rothwell said.

“The ICC has traditionally looked at conflicts that have ended.

“It certainly hasn’t had any experience looking at a conflict that is raging at the height that [the war in Ukraine] currently is.”

But a vast amount of evidence could be gathered from phones that capture the alleged crimes.

Hours of footage from the conflict have been captured on mobile phones by people on the ground in Ukraine.

Charging Putin a big political move

If ICC prosecutors gather enough evidence, it would be a big political move to charge Mr Putin, the leader of a nuclear-armed superpower, with war crimes.

Professor Rothwell said it was likely that prosecutors would take a cautious approach.

“My sense is that, considering the political sensitivities of the matter … the prosecutor of the ICC is going to be conservative in their approach at this point,” he said.

Like sanctions, Professor Rothwell said the legal actions were designed to ramp up the pressure on Mr Putin.

“All of these are attempts by states, often Western like-minded states, to seek to place the most legal pressure they can on Russia and ultimately on Putin.”

What are the alleged crimes Putin could be tried over?

As it stands, the list of allegations against Russia is long and grows every day.

The unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation is considered a war crime.

Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC argues that the case against Putin is clear.

“Invading a country, causing innocent civilians to die in their hundreds and thousands … there’s no doubt that he’s guilty of a crime against humanity,” he said.

Civilian casualties in Ukraine as a result of Russian attacks, including on densely populated neighbourhoods, schools and hospitals, are thought to be in the thousands.

Mr Putin has denied targeting civilians, claiming instead his forces have been attacking sites used by the Ukrainian military.

The bombing of a maternity and children’s hospital in Mariupol has been condemned by international leaders.

Russia has been accused by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of using cluster bombs in its attacks in Ukraine.

Amnesty International reported an instance in which a Russian cluster bomb fell on a Ukrainian preschool.

Russian forces also launched an attack around a nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia.

Damage to a compartment of a reactor on the plant prompted concerns of a nuclear accident. But the attack did not affect its safety.

Most recently, Russian forces destroyed a theatre in Mariupol where hundreds of people, including children, were sheltering, according to Ukrainian authorities

The ICC says allegations arising from the war will be added to an ongoing investigation into Russian actions in Ukraine.

The current investigation spans from 2013 to present, a time period including the Crimean crisis, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

If Putin is found guilty of war crimes, how does he face justice?

Individual countries can also prosecute war crimes in their national legal system.

The US, as well as Germany and Spain, have each opened investigations into Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and others are likely to follow suit.

While individual countries and international courts can investigate Russian crimes in Ukraine, the Russians have no legal obligation to cooperate or hand over suspects for trial or prosecution.

Similarly, if investigations by the ICC find sufficient evidence to try Mr Putin, it will issue an arrest warrant.

However the ICC has no police force of its own, and so relies on the countries that are signatories to it to arrest him.

Countries can use sanctions to pressure Russia to end the war and for Mr Putin to hand himself over, but ultimately have no power outside their own borders.

If Mr Putin were to enter any country that is signatory to the ICC, or one that has deemed him a war criminal in its own investigations, he could be arrested.

But if Mr Putin remains in Russian territory, it is likely he will not face justice.

Who has been deemed a modern war criminal?

Over the last 20 years the ICC has recorded 10 convictions, most of them commanders found guilty of committing war crimes in conflicts in Congo.

Those 10 come from 35 total arrest warrants that have been issued over the course of the court’s history.

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian President, is one of those with a warrant out against him. The Assad regime was found to have used chemical weapons against civilians and conducted torture and extrajudicial killings during the Syrian civil war from 2011 to 2015.

Mr Assad rejected the allegations of war crimes and remains free and in power in Syria.

Joseph Kony is another with an outstanding warrant from the ICC.

He created the notorious rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which abducted at least 60,000 children from Uganda and forced them into combat or sex slavery.

He was the subject of a viral 2012 documentary, produced in the hopes the publicity would increase US involvement in tracking him down.

In 2017, more than a decade after the arrest warrant was issued, Ugandan and US military forces ended their hunt for Kony and his group, with a Ugandan spokesperson stating: “The LRA no longer poses a threat to Uganda.”

Ratko Mladić  is a Bosnian Serb who is serving a life sentence for war crimes after being convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Mladić  was a high-ranking military official during the break up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, and was deemed responsible by the court for the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre.

In 2017, six years after his arrest, he was convicted on 10 charges: one of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and four of violations of the laws or customs of war. He remains in the Hague detention unit.

Courtesy: ABC.net.au